What they said

DURING THE PAST few years, I’ve used quotes about newspapers to lead off my weekly blog updates. Those of you who follow the blog will recognize some of these. Those of you who don’t…well, here’s what some people say about who we are and what we do!

“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

Oscar Wilde

“We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics. This is how we stay objective.”

Dave Barry

“Journalism never admits that nothing much is happening.”

Mason Cooley

“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”

Thomas Jefferson

“The penny papers of New York do more to govern this country than the White House at Washington.”

Wendell Phillips

“A newspaper is the lowest thing there is.”

Richard J. Daley

“A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops the clock to save time.”

Henry Ford

“If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written The Two Thousand Commandments.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor, suspicion, clues, hopes and fears—and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy.”

Walter Lippmann

“I think a great newspaper is one that puts a real premium on digging to get the story behind the story.”

Jill Abramson

“These newspaper reporters…ever since Sullivan vs. New York Times…have got a license to lie.”

Edward Bennett Williams

“I could learn how to press “Record” on a tape recorder and write for a newspaper or a magazine.”

Barry Bonds

“I wanted to be some kind of captain of industry Then I wanted to be in advertising. And then I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.”

Ken Follett

“My grandfather had been a newspaper reporter, as was my uncle. They were pretty good writers, and so I thought maybe somewhere down the line I would do some writing.”

Gene Hackman

“If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart…that’s a good picture.”

Eddie Adams

“I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyrothechnics associated with us.”

Bob Woodward

“There are three kinds of people who run toward disaster: cops, firemen and reporters.”

Rod Dreher

“Is The New York Times a liberal newspaper? Of course it is!”

Daniel Okrent

“The newspaper fits the reader’s program, while the listener must fit the broadcaster’s program.”

Kingman Brewster Jr.

“Yesteryear’s swashbuckling newspaper reporter has turned into today’s solemn young sobersides, nursing a glass of watered white wine after a day of toiling over computer databases in a smoke-free, noise-free newsroom.”